The WELL: inkwell.vue.468: Ethan Zuckerman - Rewire: Rethinking Globalization in an Age of Connectionhttp://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html
Welcome to the conversation. This feed format is reversed from the
sequence you see on the live site. You are reading one of the few topics
on The WELL that is open to all, members or not.
http://www.well.com/images/bluelogo144x60.gifThe WELL: inkwell.vue.468: Ethan Zuckerman - Rewire: Rethinking Globalization in an Age of Connectionhttp://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html
14460enFri, 09 Dec 2016 03:43:18 PSTwebmaster@well.com60
#29: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Fri 12 Jul 13 08:41
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page02.html#post29
That last exchange points to interesting questions about
personalization, privacy, data ownership, and the future of the
Internet. Unfortunately we're out of time. Thanks, Ethan, for your
compelling book and this great conversation!<br /><br />Goodreads for Rewire:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16233761-rewire<br /><br />Rewire on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Rewire-Digital-Cosmopolitans-Age-Connection/dp/0393082830/
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:41:00 PDT
#28: Ethan Zuckerman (ethanzrewire) Thu 11 Jul 13 20:23
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page02.html#post28
Jon, I think there's great benefit to stepping back from social media
and interacting with the real world. On questions of diversity -
cognitive and otherwise - I think there are lots of ways we can think
about increasing diversity in the physical world as well. One of the
analogies I make in the book is about wandering, looking at the paths
we take through physical space and choosing to stray off them
occasionally. This might mean spending time in different parts of a
city or choosing to interact with a different set of people.<br /><br />I'm interested in the same analogies online. You note that it's hard
for Netflix or Amazon to personalize without enough data. That's true -
to be able to help you wander, a predictive system needs to know what
ruts you're in. My guess is that we need systems that help us discover
new things that we're in control of, not just systems run by people
trying to market to us. I'd be far more willing to share personal data
if I were discovering new ideas, new things to read and new places to
wander than if I was helping an algorithm tailor purchasing
recommendations.<br /><br />I want to thank you, and everyone who's participated, for a really
enjoyable conversation. I appreciate the chance to discuss the book and
the ideas in it at length - thanks for the space and the opportunity.
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Thu, 11 Jul 2013 20:23:00 PDT
#27: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 10 Jul 13 13:55
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page02.html#post27
It's an interesting problem, trying to figure out what any one person
would find compelling that's also off-radar for them. It would be
interesting to see services like Netflix create more complex algorithms
for offering suggestions, combining comfortable offerings with those
that are more challenging. One issue I see is that personalization is
constrained by limited profile data. Amazon and Netflix haven't
gathered enough about me to make nuanced recommendations. <br /><br />I'd like to see a system that is explicit about the challenge: here is
where you go if you're ready to have your assumptions questioned, even
shaken. There are people who would readily go there, maybe others will
follow.<br /><br />I'm thinking a lot about how we're programmed by our many feeds and
social interactions online. That's been my life for the last few
decades, and I evolved along with the technology for social
interaction, what we've variously referred to with phrases like
&quot;virtual community,&quot; &quot;social software,&quot; and &quot;social media.&quot; A week or
so ago I realized that I had no idea what my life is outside that
context, so I decided to put social media aside for a month and get
some perspective. I wonder if that wouldn't be a useful step for many
of us? Disconnect for a while, sort out our thinking, then reconnect in
a more productive and disciplined way? Climb out of the torrent, walk
downstream to calmer waters.
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:55:00 PDT
#26: Ethan Zuckerman (ethanzrewire) Tue 9 Jul 13 12:45
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page02.html#post26
Jon, Krebs's research is really helpful stuff. There's been lots of
research on left/right polarization around media and US politics - I
review quite a bit of it in the book. It's interesting to think about
the books that he sees appealing to both left and right - some are
simply very compelling and well-written, while one seems to be being
bought by the right to better understand strategy from the left.<br /><br />I wonder whether there's an experiment to be done asking people who
hold a position - political, religious, or otherwise - to recommend
books or readings that they see as best explaining their beliefs to
outsiders. For instance, if I strongly believe in the need to reform
criminal justice in America, do I choose Michelle Alexander's masterful
&quot;The New Jim Crow&quot;, a thoughtful scholarly work that's aimed at arming
people like me who already see racial injustice in the system, or a
personal prison memoir, like Damien Echol's &quot;Life after Death&quot;? I
suspect the second is far more likely to reach an audience that doesn't
already share my concerns and passions...
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 12:45:00 PDT
#25: Ethan Zuckerman (ethanzrewire) Tue 9 Jul 13 12:35
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html#post25
Ted, I'm about to write something for my blog responding to a
thoughtful, critical review of my book in Book Forum by Astra Taylor.
(http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/020_02/11685) She rightly points out
that I'm far too easy on internet companies and probably place too much
trust in them to take on the problems I'm identifying. Ultimately, I
end up arguing that we need risk to overcome homophily. She points out
that internet companies, which depend on advertising, don't want risk.
Neither does Netflix, which wants to make you happy by giving you
movies it safely predicts you'll like (perhaps at the expense of movies
you'll love.) I wrote the book in the hopes of persuading people in
the tech community to join me in caring about these issues, and I think
I probably wasn't critical enough of the corrosive role of advertising
in making the internet safe and relatively unexciting.<br /><br />I tried not to pick a fight with Evgeny Morozov and others who are
arguing that people turn too often to technology to solve social
problems - I tried to make the case that technology was often
problematic and doesn't automatically address issues of diversity, but
argue that we need to see technology as political and strive to make it
embody the politics we aspire to. I suspect there's no ducking that
fight, and I probably should have made a stronger case for intervening
using technology. It's not that information technology is the best
solution to all problems - it's that our software is so protean that we
can experiment quickly and at low cost to try to find directions worth
exploring that it seems foolish to dismiss the idea that we might
accomplish change through code.
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 12:35:00 PDT
#24: Ethan Zuckerman (ethanzrewire) Tue 9 Jul 13 12:28
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html#post24
Gail, I think the NSA likely has enough data that they could do a very
good job of identifying bridge figures in networks - if the level of
government surveillance we're experiencing didn't deeply anger me, I'd
consider asking them if we could license the data. :-)<br /><br />I don't think they're going to have a ton of luck using this data to
identify spies. I've done some work with very large data sets. It's
hard to build an algorithm that detects something that's very rare -
you're basically trying to train an algorithm based on very few data
points. I expect that whistleblowers and leakers are so rare that it's
difficult to detect characteristics that they have in common and few
others have, though I could certainly be wrong.
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 12:28:00 PDT
#23: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Tue 9 Jul 13 09:44
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html#post23
Interesting data point:
http://www.thenetworkthinkers.com/2012/10/2012-political-book-network.html<br /><br />Valdis Krebs has been analyzing book purchases using data from Amazon,
algorithmically determining political leanings of purchasers and
determining which books were bought on the left vs the right, also
looking at the overlap, if any. The resulting clusters suggest how
polarized we are (or, at least, how polarized Amazon's customers are).<br /><br />In 2012 he saw a greater number of books being read by both clusters,
thought the polarization is still evident. Could those authors be seen
is bridge figures?
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 09:44:00 PDT
#22: Ted Newcomb (tcn) Tue 9 Jul 13 07:21
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html#post22
Ethan, anything you wish you had added to your book, or new
reflections having written it?
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Tue, 09 Jul 2013 07:21:00 PDT
#21: Gail Williams (gail) Mon 8 Jul 13 11:06
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html#post21
Out of curiosity -- do you think it's likely that is something the NSA
can do -- or could learn to do -- with phone and email interaction
records?
Would that provide insight into people who might leak/inform/spy?
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Mon, 08 Jul 2013 11:06:00 PDT
#20: Ethan Zuckerman (ethanzrewire) Mon 8 Jul 13 10:44
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html#post20
The description is aspirational, Jon - we're in the early stages of
working on a product called &quot;The Weekly Different&quot;. The idea behind
Weekly Different is that it will monitor your Twitter behavior,
probably by following the links you post, then match you to people who
have similar, or dissimilar behaviors. We should be able to calculate
degrees of similarity and we'd want to test and see whether people
prefer getting news from people who are significantly dissimilar. Our
hypothesis is that some level of dissimilarity is helpful for discovery
and that the level of discomfort/risk needs to be counterbalanced with
those benefits.<br /><br />Another possible input into Weekly Different is information on where
you are, and where your followers are, using geoinformation from
Twitter. We might look for someone who's recommending very similar
stories, but comes from a very different place, perhaps helping you
find someone with common interests and a different context.<br /><br />We might be able to use that information to identify people likely to
be bridge ties in networks - people who have lots of ties to people in
two largely disconnected communities. There's a difference between
bridge ties and bridge figures - bridge figures make a decision to
broker information between cultures. But bridge ties are a great place
to look for bridge figures.<br /><br />If we had a good algorithm for identifying bridge figures, we could
start building indexes and directories of them. I can imagine a very
different sort of discovery engine that tries to connect you to someone
who's knowledgeable and passionate about a community and likely to be
able to connect with you on the topic.
<small>[<a href="http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/468/Ethan-Zuckerman-Rewire-Rethinkin-page01.html">Read entire topic</a>]</small>
Mon, 08 Jul 2013 10:44:00 PDT